Gleaning the Expanse: Gender and Invisibilised Dimensions of Fisheries in American Samoa

The role of gender and gendered social systems within fisheries is an understudied topic, limiting the scope of our understanding of fisheries and their overarching socioecological systems and perpetuating marginalisation along gender lines. To better understand the dimensions of fisheries that are often unseen under dominant approaches to studying fisheries, we conducted semistructured interviews with 28 women and fa'afafine in American Samoa about their fisheries practices and their broader relations and interactions with the seas. Four key themes from the interviews were:

1) the significance of intergenerational relationships for the perpetuation of fishing knowledges and practices;

2) the critical role of cultural subsistence in the form of locally caught fish for elder care;

3) the cultural prominence of fisheries-related practices that would usually be excluded from fisheries studies, particularly domestic labour, art, and design; and

4) the need for a more expansive understanding of, and engagement with, gender in order to include the experiences and insights of people of all genders, particularly those outside of the dominant binary categorisation imposed especially on Indigenous communities via colonialism

Fisk J, Matagi N, Kleiber D. 2023. Gleaning the expanse: Gender and invisibilised dimensions of fisheries in American Samoa. Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin, 37:7-10